No Further Than Before
by icor
Summary: The world changes, but it keeps raining. Cloud, and Aerith - sort of.


At the edge  
Of a world  
Beyond my eyes  
Beautiful  
I know exile  
Is always  
Green with hope -  
The river  
We cannot cross  
Flows forever  
—_The Promised Land_, Samuel Menashe

--

It's just rain, he tries to explain: it's just rain, and it melts into rivers, splits the earth apart to create oceans, and it never stops falling; from the sky to the flowers from the clouds to the earth. It's not as if it even has a heartbeat; simply that it's a part of a whole, part of something _bigger_ than the way it feels on his skin, in his hair.

They worry about him sometimes. There are photos on his desk, hundreds of them—the ones he's bothered to get developed, at least—spread out as if he's made a puzzle out of the landscape. It's not healthy, but it's _Cloud_, and he's always been like this; they pick up the photos, turn them over, flip them upside down, over again, and nothing—just fields of blue and green and yellow.

Cloud always takes the photos away from them, pins them back against his wall. When they ask, as they always do, what he's taking photos of, what he's looking for, he tells them: nothing, and that's always that. He's happy, nowadays, or something it close to happiness. It makes him smile, at least, and that—well, that's something.

He has no home, and probably never has. No one knows where he is most of the time, least of all Cloud. He doesn't make plans, doesn't carry anything other than a sword and a camera, and whatever gil's hidden deep in his pockets. The world's small, he tells them, and he holds his hands out as if Gaia is a ball he can mold. He's going _somewhere_, he knows he is, and the journey's worth it. The Planet's tiny, and all he has to do is keep moving so that time doesn't matter. The here, the now: it'll be dealt with, soon enough.

(It's like this, he says, two years later: she said she was coming back, said we'd laugh together when it was all over. Everyone's silent. He knows it's not true, but he knows that she's laughing, with or without him; just in another room, perhaps, without windows, doors or light.)

No matter how far Fenrir takes him it's always cold and dry when Autumn sets in. He stops, sometimes, just to breathe, to lay in the flowers. But they're always withered, turned brown and crisp by rough winds, and the sky is empty. It scares him when it becomes colder than the day she died, and he wonders if she'd even recognise him now; his hands are calloused, as if he has been grasping for ghosts. He cannot speak for the rest of his body, his face, because oftentimes he forgets he has a reflection. (Never, ever, look in a lake, Cloud, he reminds himself. Never.)

But it passes, the feeling (the sinking) always passes. Spring comes and it passes, and he smiles again. There are flowers and there are photos and Gaia really is so insignificant when the rain begins to fall. It's Spring when it happens: either the road is too rough, or he just _stops_ searching. Fenrir's front wheel is still spinning when he realises what's happened, realises he's suddenly _outside_ of his own body. There's blood in his hair, and it happens so quickly that not having a heartbeat is as natural to him as breathing once was.

The journey's over, he thinks. Twenty-five years and the journey's over, but—promises have been broken before, so this shouldn't surprise him. He's not entirely sure what happens when; his body loses form, his mind loses shape, and the next thing he knows he's sinking through the earth, drowning and floating in the Lifestream all at once. And he can't remember, can't remember what he was looking for, who he was, but it's _wonderful_ here; the souls are all silent in the depths of the Lifestream, save one. It's a noise he can't hear, only feel, and maybe he felt it in his lifetime before.

It doesn't matter, though. When he tries to move towards the sound he never reaches it, as if there's a river he (they) can't cross. Maybe it's meant to be like this; eventually, everything ceases to be, and there's nothing left to do but rise up, to become part of the Planet and to begin again, as many times as he needs to.

Even if that takes forever, even if he never manages to get to the other side. The noise, the feeling; it's entwined with everything but him, so familiar but so distant. He can't remember anything, but as he returns to the Planet, he knows there's no need to breathe anymore.

--

Thousands of years later, and it's still raining. Everything else passes, as it must, but rain falls, streams spring to life and seas clash; rain falls from the clouds to the flowers from the sky to the earth.

Thousands of years later, and it's always raining in the Promised Land; it's part of something bigger, a feeling that doesn't need skin to touch or eyes to see or fingers to tremble.

--

It's just rain, someone once said: it's just rain.


End file.
